“What you’re seeing in the U.S. would certainly follow suit here in Canada,” Canadian Pork Council member Rick Bergmann told the Globe.

The virus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, affects mostly piglets, but has a near 100-per-cent mortality rate among them. It doesn’t spread to humans.

Rodney Baker, a veterinary medicine professor at Iowa State University, told NPR he estimates a million pigs have died in North America from the virus, and the final count could be three or four times that, amounting to three or four per cent of the industry total.

Meyer notes many other things affect the price of pork, and one positive for consumers is that pork feed has been cheap since a bumper crop of grains last fall.

But for individual farm operations, the effects of the virus could be devastating. A Quebec farmer with 1,800 pigs told the Globe he estimates if hit by the virus he could lose his entire operation, costing him $700,000 and wiping out what had begun as an “excellent year” for the industry.